Dreams
by Elisabeta
Summary: Mild PrestonPartridge slash. Preston goes back to Mary’s apartment.


Title: Dreams  
  
Author: fangirl_lizzie  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Pairing: Light Preston/Partridge; mentions of Preston/Mary and Preston/his wife.  
  
Disclaimer: Not mine, don't sue. All you'll get is a collection of my trashy fanfic and a well-thumbed copy of LotR anyway.  
  
Summary: Preston goes back to Mary's apartment.  
  
***  
  
He sat there in that little room of Mary O'Brien's, behind the cracked and broken wall of what was once her apartment. He'd never really seen wallpaper before he'd gone there that first time, and though the flowery, chintzy pattern was almost offensive to his eyes, that didn't really matter, that wasn't really the point. He crossed to the gramophone, set the record playing. Always the same one, the only one – he'd burned so many through the years and now he regretted it bitterly. Mozart, Chopin, Wagner, Tchaikovsky – what might they have sounded like? Was there anything as beautiful as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony? He didn't think then that he'd ever know.  
  
He set the photo on the table, resting it back against the base of the gramophone, and pulled up a chair. He set the red ribbon down beside the picture, ran his fingertips over the satin and smiled softly; it reminded him of Mary, and reminded him of *him* if only by association. He had next to nothing that had belonged t him; if he'd gone to his desk it would have all been the same as he's find at his own, a picture of conformity. The TetraGrammaton had confiscated everything from his apartment. He didn't even have that book of poetry, the bloodstained Yeats. All he had was a photograph of two people that he'd lost, and memories.  
  
**But I, being poor, have only my dreams**  
  
It was always the ones that were closest to him, it seemed that were the ones he couldn't read: his wife, his children, Partridge... Sense offenders, all of them, and he hadn't known until the end. It had been his job to know, and he had failed. But that wasn't what grieved him most, as he ran his fingers over the photograph; he had failed *them*.  
  
After his wife had been taken, he'd been strangely conflicted. It wasn't a feeling – the Prozium saw to that – but the thought nagged at him that there must have been something more he could have done. It ate at him. There had been signs in her that he'd overlooked. Then he'd let them take her. Then he'd let her die. And then he'd been alone. It was different, and hard to adjust when his routine had been so altered, when the bed beside his was empty.  
  
Taking comfort in his partner had seemed only natural; they worked well together in their duties as Clerics, so when it became clear that Preston's change in circumstances was affecting his work, Partridge had made the suggestion. Preston had told himself that it was solely for the satisfaction of a biological imperative that he shared a bed with Errol Partridge. At the time, he believed it.  
  
**I have spread my dreams under your feet**  
  
Errol – since his death he had started to call him that, in his head – had been a pillar of stability. Coming home from work with too-tense muscles that his wife had used to soothe and an inexplicable urge to smash things, it helped when he could pull off his clothes and bury himself inside Errol's hot body, thrust inside him, claw at his biceps and feel the sweat pool at the base of his spine. He might not have felt emotions, but he still needed contact, needed sex.  
  
But Errol... Perhaps in the beginning he'd still been taking the Prozium. Perhaps. And back when it first started it really was about the sex. But they spent more and more time together. The children got used to seeing both men at breakfast. Preston still remembered pushing the beds together and almost slipping between them in the night. He remembered Errol's eyes while he was inside him.  
  
Somewhere along the line things had changed. There were still two of Errol's shirts and a pair of polished black boots in the closet; all their shoes had been the same, all the shirts and the coats and the pants that had ever hung there were identical except for size. Sometimes they'd got mixed up, so he'd divided up the closet space, half for him and half for his partner. It was more efficient, he'd said. Errol had looked like he wanted to say something, but he'd just nodded instead.  
  
Looking back, after that, he could see it; lingering glances, Errol's gloved hand on his chest smoothing creases from his creaseless coat, the way he'd held him after sex. It was all so very obvious; Errol had started to care for him. He's started to *feel* for him. He'd just never known it before.  
  
"You always knew."  
  
He'd had no idea. At least not on the surface.  
  
**Tread softly because you tread on my dreams**  
  
The music swelled, the violins soaring and brining unbidden tears to his eyes; he brushed them away with the back of his hand. He'd always known. He just hadn't wanted to see.  
  
He'd tried not to sit and stare at the empty bed when Errol went back to his own apartment. He made excuses to stay out late, like Errol made excuses not to come. Now he knew that all those nights he wasn't with him, in his bed, he'd been out in the Nether. Probably with Mary. Had he gone to her for feeling, for the emotion he'd never had from Preston? Perhaps. He'd never know.  
  
He'd brought back to the room everything he could retrieve from the evidence locker – the record, lamps, jewellery, the postcards with the women in red polka dot swimsuits and wide-brimmed hats. He couldn't remember where it was all supposed to go so he'd just guessed. Mary would have told him it didn't matter as long as it was all there, that the attention to detail was the Cleric in him and not the man, so he'd let it be. Now it didn't matter. He was collecting things of his own – books and paintings and tatty old brightly-coloured clothes. His son and daughter were in the other room wearing colours that clashed, because it made them smile.  
  
He thought of Mary in her silly frilly skirt with her wisp of red lipstick and bare legs. Then he thought of his wife, and that last kiss, her dying passion. He thought of Errol and his clear green eyes. He thought perhaps he'd loved them all.  
  
Perhaps Prozium wasn't as effective as they'd thought. Perhaps it didn't deaden emotions but repress them, tuck them away, and when the drug wore off then they came spilling out. He hated himself for his wife's death, and for Mary's. He'd sat with a gun to his head for almost an hour thinking of the night he'd shot Errol. A part of him he'd never known existed had fallen for them all, even as his conscious self had sentenced them to death.  
  
He tucked the photograph back into his breast pocket, then turned off the gramophone. He left the ribbon where it was, turned out the light and left the room. His children were waiting.  
  
He'd done terrible things to the people he'd loved, and because of him perhaps now the world would be chaos. But he thought maybe it was worth it when he took his children's hands in his. Maybe it was worth it to have known love.  
  
Maybe it was worth it to feel.  
  
** But I, being poor have only my dream; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. -W.B. Yeats **  
  
*** End *** 


End file.
